We need to ‘redefine’ carbon farming to shake up sector

Carbon farming holds some anwers in the push to net-zero, but we need to redefine what it looks like

Skye Glenday and Josh Harris. Co-chief executives, Climate Friendly. Picture: Nic Walker

When Climate Friendly was launched in 2003 by a CSIRO scientist, the environmental landscape was a very different space.

“The philosophy was to be science-led and values-driven, and it was about making a meaningful contribution to tackling climate change and drawing down carbon,” says co-chief executive Skye Glenday. “Since carbon farming was introduced into Australia in about 2011, that’s become the sole focus of our business so that we can really help land managers to participate in that and to improve how our lands are managed around the country.”

Climate Friendly is a carbon farming company with more than 160 registered projects around Australia covering more than 10 million hectares of land.

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Glenday says the company now partners with everyone from “mum and dad farmers, landowners, agricultural producers, traditional owners and conservation organisations. We help them to get involved in carbon farming, which basically helps to improve their land management practices to store carbon in the trees and soil.”

Glenday’s co-chief executive is Josh Harris who has previously worked at the Australian Greenhouse Office, the Climate Group, and as a ministerial policy advisor. He is focused on the organisation’s operational side and its carbon-credit trading desk. Glenday, who comes from government and worked in Canberra on Australian climate policy (including development of the carbon pollution reduction scheme) and in Indonesia as climate change advisor in the Australian Embassy, is focused on supporting new projects and the research and analytics areas of the business.

The company has abated 30 million tonnes of carbon dioxide and is now working to scale up.

Skye Glenday and Josh Harris. Co-chief executives, Climate Friendly. Picture: Nic Walker

“We’re looking to establish partnerships by 2025 that will store 150 million tonnes of carbon over the project life cycle, while repairing nature and supporting reconciliation around Australia,” Glenday says. “That’s a big volume because it’s about a third of Australia’s annual emissions and we’re only a company of about 85 people, so it’s a big contribution.”

To make this ambitious goal a reality, Climate Friendly has been working with the federal government and other stakeholders, such as industry, the agricultural sector, traditional owner and conservation groups to redefine what carbon farming looks like. They have co-designed the integrated farm and land management method.

In Australia, land managers can only do one type of carbon farming on their properties. Glenday and Harris liken this to cattle farmers only being able to sell one cut or sheep producers only being allowed to sell wool.

“The new method will allow [landowners] to ultimately do the package of different things that fit their property and their land-management goals,” Glenday says. “That’ll be a real game-changer.

“Right now, a lot of people aren’t eligible because the existing methods don’t fit their physical circumstances or agricultural production. There are about 7000 agricultural properties around Australia and it’s about two per cent of people who are currently involved in carbon farming. So this will really open it up so that a lot more people can participate.”

While change has been in the works for a while – Climate Friendly has been piloting trial projects since 2019 with the hope that this proposal will be legislated by early 2024 – Glenday isn’t concerned about the pace: “I think that the diversity of experience is going to make it a stronger method. Having everyone come together means it should be a tool that can actually be implemented practically on the ground.”

As well as pushing for practical change, Climate Friendly is also agitating for a shake-up of data sharing in the sector. “We’ve been suggesting to government that it’s really important to set up a national integrated land and environment database. Without that we can’t all look at the same kind of information that’s collected at scale on the ground and see the same results in the projects,” she says.

One of the other priorities of Climate Friendly is getting Australians to appreciate the importance of the land sector in driving meaningful environmental change.

“The land sector is the only known technology for how we can draw down carbon at scale, and I think sometimes that’s forgotten,” Glenday says. “We really need to decarbonise across all sectors of the economy but to meet net-zero, and in fact net-positive, the land sector offers us the best opportunity to do that at scale.”